Eva's Story (10 page)

Minni too made a request.

‘Fritzi, be a darling,' she sighed. ‘I have such a yearning for a silver spoon. Can you try to bring one back for me?'

Minni came from a wealthy family in Prague and detested having to use the rusty spoons and chipped mugs considered good enough for the inmates of Auschwitz.

Mutti raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. ‘It's risky,' she said, thinking it over. ‘But I have an idea that might work.'

It took some days before I found a beautifully patterned silver spoon that I knew Minni would appreciate. On Mutti's instructions I slipped it under the instep in my shoe – just like my supports! We felt so daring. My pulse was racing as we entered the camp. I was ready to brazen it out somehow. But luck was with us. The search that evening was cursory and quick and I was able to walk into the camp without detection. When we handed her the spoon that evening Minni was delighted and we were all pleased with ourselves for having been so clever. Subdued though we were by the hideous regime, we had proved that we had not given up. It was an important victory.

Afterwards I reflected that it had been the most stupid thing to do because we three had such privileged positions. If we had been found out, as some were, we would have been severely punished. It could even have cost us our lives.

6 June 1944 D-Day

The Kappos must have suspected me because soon after the spoon incident I was transferred away from Mutti to another sorting hut. This time it was the bedding department where piles of beautiful hand-made patchwork eiderdowns were stacked along one side of the wall. We were instructed to search over every square inch of each one with our fingers and if we felt anything other than soft down we were to tear them apart and retrieve any hidden items sewn inside. We found lots of cigarettes neatly stitched into separate patches, the eiderdown hiding the bulk of the packets. There were gold watches, purses filled with gold coins, precious jewellery and important medicines that people could not live without and had hidden in their quilts for safety.

We were allowed half an hour's break in the middle of the day for food, which was black bread, with cheese or jam confiscated from the latest batch of incoming prisoners. If we wanted we could sit outside in the sun to eat. One lunchtime I was squatting by myself, my back against the barrack wall munching my ration and idly watching a group of male prisoners passing on the other side of the barbed wire when I suddenly recognized a familiar figure. It was my father!

I jumped up shouting ‘Pappy!' He looked at me with such amazement and delight that we wanted both to laugh and cry at the same time. We ran to the barbed wire that separated us. We could almost touch each other but we did not dare to because it was far too dangerous. We were intoxicated with excitement at the coincidence of seeing one another. In that vast camp we knew it was a miracle for both of us to be in that particular place at the same time. God had brought us together for only a little while but for ever after I felt I had not been deserted. I kept remembering how it was that suddenly, out of the blue, Pappy was there again. It strengthened my faith and my determination to pull through.

The sight of my dashing, attractive father dressed in striped prison uniform with a beret covering his shaven head was terrible. I knew how fastidious he was about his appearance. He had always had his suits made for him in London's Savile Row. I hated this humiliation and wanted to cry inside, but he was beaming at me and whispered across the barriers, ‘Evertje,
Liebling
. Thank God you're alive.'

‘Pappy -' I couldn't say any more.

‘Where's Mutti, is she with you?'

‘She's here in “Canada”, too,' I said. ‘Where's Heinz?' I asked, hoping he was nearby.

‘He's alright,' Pappy said. ‘He's on an outside job. Fresh air and exercise are doing him good. I'm working as office manager in a timber factory near here. I'm respected by the workers and even the SS bosses seem impressed. I'm making myself indispensable.'

I was sure he was going to be alright.

‘Darling, can you get hold of any cigarettes?' he went on more urgently.

‘But you don't smoke!' I was surprised he had changed his habits even in prison.

‘No, of course not, but they're very useful currency in here. I can exchange them for favours. I might be able to arrange to come again tomorrow – at the same time. Can you be here too?'

I promised I would try, this time with Mutti.

It was wonderful to tell her that night about the meeting and see her face when she knew Pappy and Heinz were still alive and well. We cried with relief.

Somehow, we managed to be by the barrier when Pappy came next day. I watched the reunion of my dear parents as they stood looking at each other on opposite sides of the wire, and I wiped away the tears that trickled down my cheeks with the back of my hand.

Over the next few days Pappy appeared regularly and Mutti and I were able to throw him packets of cigarettes over the barbed wire. Sometimes we were spotted by the Kappo. A guard even saw us once and gave us a warning, but not too seriously. Everyone else was filching cigarettes too.

By the end of the week to our great disappointment Pappy was no longer among the men who passed by on the other side of the electrified fence.

Work in ‘Canada' was dirty and hot, so after our work we were allowed to have a shower before going back to our night barrack. The showers were set up in an open space surrounded by a wooden fence. When we had stripped, many SS men enjoyed themselves by looking over the fence and leering at us. Sometimes they would goad each other into entering the enclosure to play around with the women and splash us with water. Some of the older, wiser inmates warned me time and again that I would have to be very careful not to get caught by a German and pulled into a corner to be raped. I was more scared of this than anything else so I tried to keep safely hidden. For a while, I managed to edge away from their sight by standing behind someone larger than me.

But one young soldier kept eyeing me. He began to follow me, stalking me around the camp. Everywhere I went I noticed him watching me – in the compound, in the showers, everywhere. I tried to go around in groups for protection but I knew he was becoming a particular threat to me.

One afternoon a Kappo called me out to take a message from one shed to another. As I left I was horrified to see this soldier walking after me. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and his footsteps sounded deliberate and determined. I was petrified. I did not know what to do. He could easily overpower me and if I resisted he might kill me.

‘Please God, help me!' I prayed fervently half-running, half-walking to keep in front of him, when I saw an enormous heap of clothing, about ten metres high, that had been dumped there for sorting. Several women were grouped around talking and gesticulating so I quickly scurried behind them and buried myself deep inside the mountain of clothes. I was certain that no one had spied me and I prayed that when I eventually came out the soldier would be gone.

I could hear the sorters talking among themselves as they gradually reduced the proportions of my hide-out but I dared not risk them seeing me since they might give me away. I stayed hidden for what seemed ages – at least half an hour. All began to go quiet outside as the sorters moved away. I realized that if I stayed there much longer I would get a beating from the Kappo so, very slowly and cautiously, I pushed my shaven head out from under the overcoats and dresses and warily looked around.

To my enormous relief the soldier had given up and gone. My luck was still in. I chuckled at the thought of how comical I must have looked with my egg-head gradually emerging from a heap of clothing.

Our ‘good' life lasted for a very short time, only a few weeks, throughout June and into July. Inevitably our luck was beginning to run out.

In June thousands of Hungarians had arrived as prisoners and workers in ‘Canada' laboured at top speed sorting out their possessions for the Nazis. I still looked out for Pappy daily but he did not come.

By the end of July, there was a diminishing intake into Auschwitz and we were laid off.

20 August 1944 Russians capture Rumania

There was no other constructive work for us to do so Mutti and I were transferred to another sort of work, the Aussen Komando.

We were put with a group of women who had to carry huge blocks of stone from one side of the camp to the other. Then, to fill in the time, we had to chip away at the stones with heavy hammers and break them down into tiny pieces. This interesting work was supervised by the more brutal Germans. They were vicious bullies. If we dared to rest a little or did not hit the stones hard enough they would curse us, threaten us with the butt of a gun and finally beat us up. We suffered hard labour for several weeks by which time Mutti had become very thin, partly from lack of food but also from exertion and worry.

Sometimes in the evenings we had the rare relief of a spare twenty minutes between work and Appel. It was then Mutti had an idea to augment our diet.

‘Let's go behind the kitchen barrack and see what we can find on the rubbish heap,' she said.

We made sure that nobody realized what we were up to as we walked nonchalantly along the blocks until we came to the stinking waste stacked behind the kitchen. Mutti kept look-out while I picked up a discarded carrot top.

‘This must be good to eat,' I said as I gnawed at it.

‘I could try and swap that part,' said Mutti, looking at the wizened green stalk and leaves. ‘I could say it is vitamin-rich parsley.'

I rummaged around and discovered half a mouldy pumpkin with some flesh clinging to the inside.

‘We could pretend this is melon,' I said.

We put small pieces of discarded peel and the green carrot tops into our mugs and carried them back to our barrack. We called them melon and parsley and exchanged them for bread. Everyone craved extra vitamins. We knew it was essential to try to keep our strength up. It was becoming a matter of life and death for all of us. We wanted to prevent the swollen legs and bellies that lack of vitamins had produced in longer term prisoners.

Taking it in turns to be look-out, we tried to scavenge in the waste bins as often as possible for beet-ends, onion skins, cabbage leaves – anything that we could eat with our bread as a little extra delicacy. Mutti made me wash the pieces of discarded vegetables in our substitute coffee to avoid infection.

Wherever we walked we scanned the ground for anything useful. One evening when we were wandering miserably around the compound Mutti discovered some waste buckets full of little items like hankies, scarves, gloves, even cigarettes. These were small personal belongings that the new arrivals had kept in their pockets until they had finally been forced to throw them away. For us they were riches. We took what we could. The hankies were dirty of course, but we washed them as best we could in the showers, folded them neatly and dried them under the mattress. Then we walked through the block calling out, ‘Who wants to swap bread for hankies, scarves or cigarettes?' and got more offers than we had goods.

It was an extraordinary way to start a little business but it worked. Occasionally we were found out and punished – our own bread ration was confiscated – but we became quite sought after by women who had something to swap. In the evenings we talked incessantly among ourselves about food. By now we were all much thinner and lethargic. We noticed the physical change in all of us. Oddly enough, almost from the first week, not one of us had our periods. We were worried about what would happen if we did have a period, especially as we had nothing to keep us clean, but we never had one. Someone said there was bromide in the soup which stopped them, but we didn't know if that was true. I felt it might be the case because I often had a strange sense of ‘floating' after drinking the soup.

25 August 1944 Paris liberated

Every few weeks our hair would be cropped to our skulls by the Kappos who wielded large blunt scissors. It was painful and humiliating. Mutti's head looked very strange and knobbly after it was shaved. She was always grateful when her hair had grown a couple of centimetres and began to cover her skull again. She said she felt more human. The Kappos insisted that having our head shaved regularly was to control lice. It was, in fact, a deliberately dehumanizing process that made us look and feel like criminals. We hated having to submit to it.

3 September 1944 Brussels liberated by British forces

2 October 1944 US First Army breaches Siegfried Line north of Aachen

At the beginning of October, during the weekly shower sessions, we noticed a difference in the atmosphere. Something awful was about to happen. The Kappos were shouting at us more than usual. Fear hung in the air.

As always we left our clothes outside before showering. We were very frightened as we entered the shower room and heard the doors close behind us. We held our breath. When cool water streamed down on our heads we prayed with relief.

But to our dismay, as the doors opened on the other side to let us out, there stood several SS men and women. A slim, upright and immaculately uniformed officer stood in front of them facing us. We immediately recognized him as Dr Mengele, who held the power of life or death over us. He was known as Dr Death. The stories of his appalling experiments circulated amongst the prisoners and brought terror to his victims. We realized with intense fear that a ‘selection' was to be held.

Each one of us had to take part in a desperate parade where we had to turn slowly around in front of him. He scrutinized us with a kind of clinical precision to decide our fate. We all tried to stand upright and look strong, but we were a pathetic group of undernourished, overworked and emaciated women. At his indication the first few were sent to the right, then one little woman was sent to the left. She stood there trembling with fright. Soon another two were sent to her side where they stood clinging together. The sorting continued.